Thanks to you - Loyal Readers - and OBVIOUSLY Enlightened readers - who read Simplybecauseitis on a regular basis - Simplybecauseitis is up around 7k hits a month. Not bad for a blog that's only been up 7 months.
One of the things I've done though that has increased traffic is I label the photos that I take myself that I put on my blog.
Now when people are looking for images they often find my blog based on images and this has driven up my traffic considerably. In fact, nearly 40% of my traffic CONSISTENTLY has been through google searches for topics or images on a daily basis which continues to drive my traffic up while still maintaining a 40% (actually over 40%) new-user hit rate while ever increasing the number of subscribers to my site.
Not only that, I live in a part of the world (Oregon, USA) where there really aren't a lot of photographs of a lot of topics inland. People think "Oregon" - they think "Coast, forest, Portland, Crater Lake" and that's about it.
There are a lot of other places and topics that haven't been photographed. Jewell! Mist! Fishhawk Falls! Vernonia! Try looking around the web for photos of something specific - and you'll find there aren't a whole lot. In fact, many of the photos I put in my blog off the net - sometimes take me hours to put together from a variety of sources unless I make the photo montage myself.
Actually a couple of the biggest consistent repeat hits on my blog have been for my Minelab Explorer II - which you will find pictures of my metal detecting adventures with a google search for images for "Minelab Explorer II" - and the "Obama Racism Test" pulls up my blog as the number on search on the internet. My article on "How to reduce stress" is another one that's consistently hit - as well as my photographic essays around Oregon.
If you think about it - I know we live in the US - and I live in a rain forested valley quite literallly (it does rain for weeks and months on end here!) it's a unique place that much of the world doesn't see. When you consider that there are three continents (Australia, Antarctica (population what 20 though?) and Africa (all starting with "A" - interesting "Americas" and "Asia" - then there's that bastardized continent Europe with an "E") the photography from here is unique in its own way in the world.
There are so many small places to be photographed in the world though. The Nehalem River? Not many pictures of it in terms of quality color candid non staged shots - and again - my photos are among the top first searches in Google.
I deliberately don't copyright my photos on the net. Why? Because I want people to use them. I want to go around the web someday and see my photo being used on someone else's page. I've now seen the Obama Ass Kicking Coupon (Which I made myself) in a couple places on the net and if you google "Obama ass kicking coupon" well....there's only one and it came from here. That and while the internet gives you a TON of information - it's by and large unorganized and useless.
So if you upload a photo onto the net? Label it!
I do also do my fellow bloggers - military bloggers - a favor and blogroll them (on the side with the articles) - and some of them have returned the favor and linked to me and I consistently pick up some traffic from their links.
That's it for now - just an observation and a thought.
